Kali Goddess of Destruction

Kali Lore

To speak of Kali is to speak of the beginning of time itself.

Across the majestic lands of Hindustan...

Read Kali Full Lore

Kali Lore

To speak of Kali is to speak of the beginning of time itself.

Across the majestic lands of Hindustan rose an army of demons that conquered the countryside and slaughtered the people. Yet, when the Gods themselves were defeated, Devi, the supreme Goddess, emerged to throw back this host and protect the faithful.

Three forms she took during these ancient times. The first, Durga, the Mother of Creation, was as radiant as she was fearsome. Astride her tiger, she scattered the demon horde until she encountered the horrendous Raktabija. For each wound she gave the demon, his cursed blood created a copy, quickly resulting in an unstoppable army of Raktabija clones. Rage boiled at the corners of Durga's mind, in the quest to slaughter and destroy evil. From the forehead of Durga sprung her wrathful form, with skin darkened and eyes glowing a menacing red.

Thus was Kali, the Black One, Goddess of Time and Destruction, the second form of Devi born.

Rarely has Kali been seen since, kept in the shadows of Devi's mind, but when the tides of battle shift and evil looms large, there is no solution but unrestrained destruction of evil, and Kali once again, walks the Earth.

This only has enough pen against squishies (via Stone Cutting Sword's passive at full stacks + the flat 10 from Hastened Fatalis). It will do significantly less damage against tanks, and Kali can be a crazy tank killer. Basically, she should be getting either The Executioner or Titan's Bane in most situations...Exe for higher DPS, TB for objective damage and general consistency.

3x crit with Deathbringer as a "depending on affordability" option with Rage as the other option? DB should be essential in any crit build.

Extra movement speed is nice. SCS can provide some great damage, but even more move speed is somewhat unnecessary, as she already has both boots and Hastened Fatalis. Also, SCS is specifically better against physical gods, as the passive provides you with physical protection.

Qin's Sais is great for her, due to her basic attack string of 1 / 0.5 / 0.5. Those last 2 hits will do 1/2 damage of standard, but still get full proc of the passive.

More effective against both squishies and tanks. Also has higher power and attack speed, so she'll do more damage to objectives.

Now, you can make some changes to my build...sub Stone Cutting Sword for Bloodforge and you'll get slightly higher DPS, for example...but lose on a bit of extra sustain (yes, she has some lifesteal in her kit, but it's still nice to have the high power and shield from Bloodforge. You can also consider Heartseeker, since she builds stacks extremely quickly...and you might build it earlier in the build, even right after finishing boots (BTW, Warrior Tabi is better for early game...late game you'd switch for Ninja Tabi.

You can sub Titan's Bane in for The Executioner. You'll get less basic attack DPS, but gain a lot of objective damage, which is especially nice for modes like Conquest.

Either way, for a cheaper cost, you get a stronger build that doesn't rely on RNG and has a very early damage spike via Qin's Sais (you can get it 2nd or 3rd in that build, as needed).

Alright, newb and I were talking about Kali before I'd posted this...I was working on a breakdown of her DPS with build variants.

To clarify, cells with 2 values are as follows: e.g. first cell, standard build vs Agni...it lists 633 / 757. This is DPS with 0 stacks of a stacking item (in this case, The Executioner) and at max stacks. At full build, her high attack speed and attack progression will get her to max stacks in ~1 second, as long as all 3 attacks hit. That's quick.

What can we pull from this?

Highest potential DPS of these options is when using Stone Cutting Sword in place of Bloodforge in my standard build. Also provides very high move speed which is great for the jungle, and it functional to help mitigate a bit of damage from physical gods.

Best balance of DPS and sustain is my standard build. Bloodforge provides a nice lifesteal enhancement to her Lash, and she'll get a temporary 400 extra health from the passive, also with added move speed while the shield lasts (max 20 seconds or until destroyed).

Titan's Bane in place of The Executioner is definitely going to have significantly less DPS overall. It will take very little time to build Exe stacks (again, likely about 1 second for 3 hits), and if you're 100-0ing even a squishy player, you'll need at least 3 seconds if only counting basic attacks. However, TB is extremely important if you're looking for objective damage, so that tradeoff isn't so bad. Even with TB, her DPS is still strong. Thus, restating that TB is for objectives, Exe is for overall DPS.

Odysseus' Bow was omitted from this list. When incorporating it in combination with TB, either as a replacement for The Crusher or Bloodforge, DPS was lower. O-Bow is thus okay when getting TB (and missing the added attack speed from Exe), and can be nice in a teamfight situation, but really isn't all that optimal. Why? It has no power. Sure, it gives a boost to Qin's passive. However, we already have one item with 0 power ( Hastened Fatalis), and adding a 2nd just starts cutting into her DPS potential.

Heartseeker's added damage isn't really worth it, late-game. A measly ~145 extra damage (specifically after building 5 stacks and then using a damaging ability) is less than even 1 basic attack. The only reason HS would be worth it would be as a power spike and move speed boost in the early game.

Of course, adding in situational protection items can also work, depending on matchups and whatnot...things like Shifter's Shield, or true protection items...but in terms of raw DPS, this should give a good idea of the main options.

I agree that crit is bad on her, but it's not because his build lacked Deathbringer, which is also a flaw. It's because of the attack chain it gives .5 damage on 2/3rds of her attacks. However, this also applies to what she gets from lifesteal making Bloodforge with its high cost less attractive.

Also movement speed is a key stat on Kali as she needs to be able to run down her targets so having more movement speed items isnt a negative if they are adding to her overall build.

I differ with you on two points.

Kali has a transitional period in the game. In the early game she is a poke god like Mercury and most play hinges around Lash and Incense. At the start you want to go Bluestone Pendant, Warrior Tabi, and Heartseeker not because its high DPS but allows you to poke down and then all in much safer. It also makes your burst potential fairly strong if you catch out a squishy early and do the 3 -> 2 combo with heartseeker passive, you'll easily do at least half hp. If you build auto attack from the get go and try to fight someone early you are likely to just lose unless they and their team have no idea what is going on.

I also think you are focusing too much on DPS and not enough on Time to Kill and Shots to Kill. These two stats are more important on assassins as you aren't looking to provide sustained DPS so much as kill and move on to the next marked target to keep riding the passive heal. If you sacrifice too much in time to kill you are much more likely to die early on.

When running similar calculations to the ones you did with the agni and athena your builds did have higher DPS on enemies with the target and without the target.

However, my build had a faster kill time against both squishies and tanks as well as took fewer autos to kill. Against squishies you were looking at about a quarter of a second difference in kill time and 1 less auto. Against tanks however your build generally takes 20+ hits to 100-0 regardless of target where mine takes 14 for a target and 19 for nontarget. Because the calculator I use cuts Time to Kill at 20 autos due to it being highly unrealistic I wasn't able to get a direct time comparison, but the Time to Kill for the targeted tank was 5.96 and the non targeted tank was 8.25

Whoa. What calculator do you use? Is it complex? I'd like to see it...sounds like fun. Krett or something else? Your own make?

I forgot about the 0.5 progression also affecting/reducing the lifesteal portion as well. I think I'd still appreciate the extra lifesteal, but if it's at a cost of not being able to run an opponent down via the added movespeed from SCS, then it's not as appealing. But if it's a teamfight, and she gets a kill and the fight is going south for the enemy team and they retreat, that extra 20% move speed should be pretty functional to help her catch up, shouldn't it? (I'm asking, because you're the more knowledgeable by far)

I do mention for HS about it being used in the early game.

Big question..what exactly is it in your build that is allowing you to do significantly more damage leading to time to kill of 14 hits instead of 20 on a tank? I put it into Smite Builder, and it looks like:

My build has 195 power to yours at 160...would expect my damage after the 2nd hit to be higher.

Attack speed is almost identical...2.13 for mine, 2.18 for yours.

At full stacks, mine has 36% protection reduction + 25 flat pen. Yours has 30 protection reduction + 33% pen + 10 flat pen. At first glance, it looks like you have higher overall pen by what would be equivalent to 15 extra flat pen...but against a tank, is it that significant that you're reducing TTK by 3+ seconds???

O-Bow has that passive...so every 4th hit it's providing an extra 78 damage (before mitigations?). You said 14 hits for a target, so that would be 3 x 78 = 234.

Okay, I forgot about the passive providing pen. I checked it, and it's % pen, which starts to make sense. 10% against a target + 1% per level...so, 30% at level 20. Is there not a % pen cap? Makes sense in getting TB then...Exe's 36% protection reduction would reduce the effect of the 30% pen from the passive.

Against your target, makes a ton of sense why TB is better (with O-Bow making up for its lack of attack speed). Against a non-target, my expectation would be that my build would have better DPS. Does that sound about right?

Thanks for the explanation on the transition portion. Very interesting.

It's krett calc that I've adjusted item values and done simple item passive programming. Haven't added new gods or anything as I don't have time for that.

It's functional, but requires that you get a kill where stone cutting sword gives you guaranteed movement speed. Also the protection steal gives you very relevant protections since your base is so low allowing you to survive longer under towers and against physical damage than bloodforge lifesteal.

Yeah, I wanted to clarify for people reading in what context it needed to be used. It's not great unless your basing the early game around lash poke/burst.

Your build has a higher DPS value in all cases, but my build has a higher effective DPS, aka damage after protections. That's why there isn't a huge difference against the squishy targets, they have less protections so they mitigate less damage.

The Executioner passive doesn't factor in to the first auto attack. This is why I have a lower Shots to Kill against squishies. I'm constantly reducing protections while you have to do one hit against their full mitigation and then gradually reduce. While most of my pen is right away and only slightly reduces

Lets take the first 4 hits against the Athena, bear in mind I've rounded off decimals

When you factor in that Qin's Sais passive deals physical damage and is therefore mitigated by physical protections you can see where the effective damage comes in. I'm firing into significantly fewer protections until the 4th hit where your penetration passes me by 3.

Death's toll and short bow to start off with, get that too an Ichaival and then go warrior tabi. After that you might wanna pick up stone cutting sword, executioner or fatalis depending on your build preferenc but those should be in there along with Qin's. If you need more health whilst still outputting damage go for frostbound.

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Smite is an online battleground between mythical gods. Players choose from a selection of gods, join session-based arena combat and use custom powers and team tactics against other players and minions. Smite is inspired by Defense of the Ancients (DotA) but instead of being above the action, the third-person camera brings you right into the combat. And, instead of clicking a map, you use WASD to move, dodge, and fight your way through the detailed graphics of SMITE's battlegrounds.